This is more confusing if the comment makes multiple claims, though, but that’s a failure mode of the agree and disagree also.
It’s also more confusing if the original comment made a claim like “The sky is blue, with 70% probability.” Then if a user assigns 40% probability to that comment, it’s not clear whether they mean:
I think it’s 40% likely that the sky is blue.
I think it’s 40% likely that you assign 70% probability to the sky being blue. (E.g., maybe you’re going back and forth about what your true belief is, and I want to weigh in on what I think your view is.)
I think it’s 40% likely that you’re correct in assigning 70% probability to the sky being blue. (E.g., maybe I think you’re underconfident and the true probability is 90%; or maybe I think you’re overconfident and the true probability is 50%; etc.)
I just made a bunch of claims all at once… that is indeed a failure mode of this system which is going to regularly occur.
I think the current system isn’t ideal, but I don’t particularly mind this specific issue. It’s already a problem for upvotes/downvotes, and I think upvotes/downvotes are a good feature on net in spite of this. (And it’s at least plausible to me that adding more UI complexity in order to let someone upvote/downvote parts of posts/comments would be net-negative.)
Part of why I’m fine with this issue is that I think it’s just good for people to be separately tracking agree/disagree and good/bad. Even if they don’t end up voting ‘agree/disagree’ that often, I expect positive affects from the mental activity alone. (E.g., prompting people to think in this mode might cause them to notice that they agree with the first half of a comment but not the second half; in which case we’re already making good things happen, whether or not they write a follow-up comment explicitly saying ‘I agree with the first half but not the second’.)
It’s also more confusing if the original comment made a claim like “The sky is blue, with 70% probability.” Then if a user assigns 40% probability to that comment, it’s not clear whether they mean:
I think it’s 40% likely that the sky is blue.
I think it’s 40% likely that you assign 70% probability to the sky being blue. (E.g., maybe you’re going back and forth about what your true belief is, and I want to weigh in on what I think your view is.)
I think it’s 40% likely that you’re correct in assigning 70% probability to the sky being blue. (E.g., maybe I think you’re underconfident and the true probability is 90%; or maybe I think you’re overconfident and the true probability is 50%; etc.)
I think the current system isn’t ideal, but I don’t particularly mind this specific issue. It’s already a problem for upvotes/downvotes, and I think upvotes/downvotes are a good feature on net in spite of this. (And it’s at least plausible to me that adding more UI complexity in order to let someone upvote/downvote parts of posts/comments would be net-negative.)
Part of why I’m fine with this issue is that I think it’s just good for people to be separately tracking agree/disagree and good/bad. Even if they don’t end up voting ‘agree/disagree’ that often, I expect positive affects from the mental activity alone. (E.g., prompting people to think in this mode might cause them to notice that they agree with the first half of a comment but not the second half; in which case we’re already making good things happen, whether or not they write a follow-up comment explicitly saying ‘I agree with the first half but not the second’.)